This September I travelled down to Norfolk to visit my niece who is volunteering with the RSPB and Natural England there. I only took my medium lens with me as I’d pulled a muscle in my back a few days before and didn’t want to be carrying the big lens about.
Someone told me that I’d see barn owls on my first visit to Norfolk and sure enough I saw this ghostly hunter at dusk and dawn from Holme reserve. There was also a short eared owl quartering the grassland at the same time. I saw spoonbills in the river but the light was too poor to get good photographs of them.
We returned to Holme very early in the morning, in time to see the sunrise and witness the “golden hour”.
Can you spot the barn owl again in this early morning photograph?
I’m used to seeing roe deer on my local patch but the deer I was seeing here were muntjac deer.
The spoonbills were elsewhere this morning but I heard the wing beats of a mute swan flying and caught it on camera as it flew past me.
I also observed marsh harriers hunting.
From large hunters to small ones, here is a photo I took of spiders’ webs in the window of a bird hide.
This beautiful wall brown butterfly was sunning itself on a boardwalk.
I saw some amazing moths at Holme. Some were on the wooden wall of the bird observatory. However most of the moths I got to see had been caught in moth light traps which had been set up overnight.
What a great place for nature, and it reminded me of how dawn and dusk really are the best times to observe the natural world.
